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“What do you think of her?” Yukari asks Junpei some time after he joins the dorm. Yuki-kun has already left the classroom for the day, his face set in his usual bored and impassive expression as Tomochika chats his ear off about something or another on their way to get ramen. With his hands shoved in his pockets and his hair carelessly skewing his eyes, he always looks so unbothered, so untouched by it all; in a weird way it reminds her of Mitsuru and Yukari has to stamp down on a sudden flare of jealousy and resentment. She swallows and presses forward, catching Junpei's attention before he can also head out. “Kirijo-senpai, I mean?”
“Asking my opinion?” Junpei says, grinning in a way that immediately bodes nothing good. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen, huh, Yuka-tan?”
Yukari's mouth tightens. Regret sits heavy in her gut but realistically there was no one else she could have this conversation with without feeling a crushing amount of shame or awkwardness.
“Never mind,” she huffs, turning away from Junpei to shove her things into her satchel, scowling down in the direction of her half started homework assignment on the practical uses of magic, having written and then just as quickly erased: Healing your dormmates slash reluctant co workers so they don't die while fighting monsters in Tartarus. “I don't know what I was thinking, asking you to be serious for once—”
“Hey, don't be like that.”
Yukari looks up from her desk, mouth pressing into a firm line. Junpei doesn't look apologetic, exactly, but then she would never expect him to. His smile has softened a little around the edges though so Yukari straightens to look at him full on while crossing her arms across her chest, as good a go ahead as any for him to continue.
Junpei rubs the back of his head, looking half sheepish, half contemplative. “You're really weird about her, you know that? Like you get all bristly and defensive whenever she comes up.”
She feels heat flush her face. Yukari scowls harder to hide it, feeling caught out. "You're ridiculous," she says. "I'm not going to stand around here all day if you're not going to give a straight answer."
"Well, she's amazing," Junpei says slowly, like he's really thinking it over. "Pretty much close to perfect, really. But that kind of makes her hard to relate to in a way. Kind of like she lives in a different world than the rest of us." He cracks a smile and something in his eyes looks too knowing for its own good. Yukari digs her nails into her palms, her throat oddly tight. She wants to snap that he doesn't know a damn thing but she keeps the words trapped behind her teeth. It would be unfair. She was the one to ask after all. “Nothing like us lowly plebs.”
“Speak for yourself,” Yukari retorts but it's all by rote, a script she can read off in her sleep, her mind still stuck on the glimpse of Mitsuru she had caught earlier today in the hallway and how she had felt something well up inside of her, the same hot and angry thing she has been swallowing back every time she meets her eyes in the dorm or in the hall, but Mitsuru didn't look at her, didn't acknowledge her at all. Yukari doesn't know how to explain how that makes her feel, why it makes her want to grab at Mitsuru and shake her, to make her look and not have her look away, to see Yukari in all her entirety.
What difference would it make? She turns Junpei's words over in her head, wondering why it matters so much, why she wants to matter so much. Different worlds? She holds back a scoff. More like different universes.
Tartarus is exhausting. They've climbed almost a hundred floors and Yukari still feels like the world's biggest amateur. Yuki-kun gives off the strange impression that he was built specifically for just this, cycling through Personas like it is nothing, cool and unflappable even in the heat of battle. Even Junpei thrives in it too, always grinning like it is a game and their lives aren't at stake, always rared up and ready to go. Yukari can't shake the feeling that she is the odd one out. She doesn't think she will ever get used to it: the oppressive atmosphere, so strange and otherworldly, the death and danger lurking around every corner, the flinch she has to hold back every time she puts the barrel of the Evoker against her head and pulls the trigger.
Mitsuru just makes it look so easy. Yukari watches her in battle or at the dorm or at school and she's always so pretty and pristine, nary a hair out of place nor so much as a dark circle under her eyes while Yukari looks half dead on her feet even with the truly absurd amount of concealer she has applied to the skin underneath her own.
One morning Yukari gets up before the crack of dawn to make breakfast while she sits at the table with her textbooks and homework assignments spread out. She's biting the end of her eraser in thought when she hears the creak of the stairs and looks up to see none other than Mitsuru. She's wearing a nightgown with a shawl around her shoulders and there should be some vulnerability in seeing Mitsuru in a way no one else likely has, still clad in her truly ridiculous nighttime attire, but she just looks so perfect and composed that it makes Yukari who is already in her school uniform feel overdressed by comparison.
Yukari swallows, venturing a smile. “Oh,” she says, injecting some false cheer into her voice. “You're up early, Kirijo-senpai.”
“Takeba,” Mitsuru returns evenly. It makes Yukari wonder what her given name would sound like in Mitsuru's voice. Takeba always carries a faint tinge of distaste or disapproval to Yukari's ears, like Mitsuru had measured her worth and found her lacking. "I thought I might make some tea."
She tracks the movement of Mitsuru's ring finger as it hooks behind the shell of her ear, the rest of her fingers curled slightly inwards as Mitsuru smooths some hair behind it. The oddly mesmerizing action makes Yukari swallow dryly, heat pooling in her stomach. She averts her eyes, glancing down at the algebraic equation she is no closer to solving than she was fifteen minutes ago.
“That's so you,” Yukari says, laughing under her breath as she erases part of the equation, and when her eyes flick back up she is startled to find Mitsuru has drifted closer.
Mitsuru is standing far enough to not be in Yukari's space but close enough for Yukari to make out Mitsuru's frown as she looks at Yukari carefully, her arms folded across her chest and her fingers whitening on her elbows.
"You say that a lot," Mitsuru says after a long moment, sounding strangely hushed. "I must confess I never quite know what you mean.”
It means that you're perfect, Yukari thinks. It means that you're untouchable, the girl who has everything: good looks and good grades and a good family name and a father who isn't dead. It means that there's no way I can ever hope to compare or measure up or have you look at me like I mean anything at all.
The silence that follows is thick, almost as impenetrable as the self imposed distance and niceties that define these few and far interactions between them. Yukari swallows, feeling guilty and ashamed. Her face is so hot and only gets hotter when Mitsuru's eyes drift over everything Yukari has spread out over the table.
“You should be more mindful of your studies,” Mitsuru says. “I know it's difficult to manage our extracurricular activities with school but we must achieve that careful balance in order to succeed in all aspects of life.”
The embers of Yukari's long simmering anger and discontent spark but as angry as Yukari is in this moment she almost feels vindicated, relishing in the opportunity for Mitsuru to be the villain she has always longed for her to be, for her to finally have an excuse to lash out.
“I think I'm succeeding just fine,” Yukari says, voice tight, while Mitsuru looks at her with something strange in her eyes. Yukari wants to prod it out, to unravel Mitsuru inch by inch until she stops feeling so distant and otherworldly, until she is just as wretchedly human as Yukari or anyone else. “I'm not Junpei.”
Mitsuru huffs out a laugh. “Trust me,” she says, the tilt of her mouth almost looking amused. “There's no way I could ever mistake you for Iori.”
Yukari doesn't trust her at all. There's too much they don't know about everything with Tartarus and the Dark Hour and too much Mitsuru is not willing to disclose out of some misguided sense of leadership. She wants to tell Mitsuru that to her face and see the expression Mitsuru would make in response. Would her face crumble in on itself or would it remain as perfectly sculpted as ever, Mitsuru a marble statue of a teenage girl if there ever was one?
Yukari lowers her hands to her lap, clenching her fingers together underneath the table so she doesn't do something as reckless and absurd as throwing her eraser at Mitsuru.
“Then what? Why am I the exception?”
“I have high expectations for all of you,” Mitsuru says, something flickering across her face, here one moment and gone the next, “but you especially. With enough hard work and persistence I trust you will live up to it." She nods at Yukari's study materials and half completed homework spread out before her. Yukari hates how it is sitting there mocking her under Mitsuru's all too critical gaze, just another reminder of all the ways she will never be enough. "This is just a stepping stone to that.”
Yukari scrapes her chair back and can't even properly relish in the look of surprise on Mitsuru's face as she starts to gather up her things, unable to bear being in the same room as Mitsuru for a second longer. Her throat is tight and so is her jaw from how hard she is clenching it.
“Sorry for being such a disappointment, Kirijo-senpai," Yukari bites out and it's so stupid how her eyes are burning. The last thing she wants is for Mitsuru to ever see her cry.
Mitsuru frowns, concern flaring up in her eyes. Her hands fall away from her chest to flex uselessly at her sides. She stands there frozen while Yukari finishes clearing the table only to come jerkily to life and trail after her, catching Yukari's arm only to freeze again when Yukari turns with one foot on the stairs and slants a venomous glare towards her.
“Takeba—”
"Don't touch me," Yukari says, deathly quiet, watching the nervous swallow of Mitsuru's throat like one would watch a bug under a microscope, feeling a sort of distant fascination.
Mitsuru drops Yukari's arm, taking a careful step back. Her eyes are wide. ”Takeba,” she tries again, sounding almost desperate.
“Enjoy your tea,” Yukari says, channeling some of the fridgidness that comes to Mitsuru so easily. “Senpai.”
She holes herself up in her room until it is time to leave and take the monorail to school, feeling the strangest mix of relief and disappointment when she comes down to the first floor and doesn’t see Mitsuru. Exams come and go; Yukari watches Mitsuru compliment Yuki-kun back in the dorm on scoring so high for their year, Yukari's mouth drying when Mitsuru catches her eye and holds her gaze for a too long moment before glancing away, curling her delicate fingers around her tea cup and hiding her mouth behind the rim when she raises it to her lips to drink.